At the first balting-place that night he was put in a small room with several Chinese prisoners. A man dressed in civilium clothes, Liu by nome, who appeared to be some kind of official and a person of some authority, came and visited him. As he appeared to be more reasonable than the others, Mr. Poletti was able to explain to him that he was not a Japanese but an Italian. This did not help matters very much, for the official thereupon said angrily "That's just as bad. The Italians are our enemies too and have been helping the Japanese." Mr. Poletti then went on to explain that he was a Postal official who had worked over 30 years for the Chinese Government Well then, you must be a traitor," replied the other. "For you were appointed by the Kuomintang Government, and are now working for the Japanese." Anyhow, this conversation appears, at least, to have had the result of deferring his immediate execution as a hated Japanese; and his captors thoughts turned to the question of ransom.
He was told that he would have to find $200,000. Mr. Poletti protested that he was a poor man, an official on a fixed monthly salary. But he was told to shut up and at pistol point wrote a note to friends in Peiping asking them to send out a sum of money by the chauffeur and boy, who were sent down with the message, leaving the mafoo in his masters company. The instructions given were to send the money to a rendezvous in a certain village, where £he prisoner would be set free, if the ransom proved sitistactory. But on Tuesday the two men fumed up again, having foolishly handed over the money ($10,000) direct to the kidnappers. So the money was gone, and Mr. Poletti still remained a prisoner. ransom, as he was not allowed to correspond with Peiping. It can only have been due toa kind of sadistic pleasure, not entirely unknown among that brutal type of Chinese.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.